Content area
Full Text
Big things are beginning to happen in Brooklyn.
A boroughwide effort to entice business to Brooklyn, the accelerating demographic forces, drawing baby-boomer couples outside Manhattan, and the lure of Brooklyn's extensive housing stock are quickening the pace of economic development in this Victorian city across the river from Manhattan.
But what will probably propel Brooklyn into a new era of solid economic growth will be its growing cultural and life-style amenities and its downright neighborliness. Corporate and homeowner "immigrants" are increasingly finding that Brooklyn is a nice place to live and work.
It was a substantial package of financial and tax incentives that first enticed Morgan Stanley & Co. to relocate its data-processing center and operations division to One Pierrepont Plaza, the 19-story office tower that opened in mid-May, in downtown Brooklyn. And it's Brooklyn's community spirit that will help keep those operations there.
Stephen E. Rothbaum, Morgan's managing director who helped shepherd the move of 625 operations and computer people from 55 Water St., says he fully expected to lose some Manhattan devotees on his staff in the transition. Of course, given the general contraction of jobs on Wall Street in recent months, he never anticipated a mass exodus of employees. But he says, "I expected to lose at least five or six people" because of travel time or life style concerns.
Instead, he's lost on one.
In large part, he attributes his staff's comfortableness with the move to the continuing efforts of Brooklyn civic leaders and officials like Borough President Howard Golden. "We've been welcomed with open arms by the Brooklyn community," Mr. Rothbaum says. "Everyone here has been very supportive and super-accommodating."
Two months before the move, the Brooklyn Historical Society led Morgan employees on walking tours of the borough in small groups of 10 to 12 people at a time. Local representatives from the Metropolitan Transit Authority helped workers plan out new commuting routes to and from their...